Infinite Cold
by Unwanted
Summary: Chapter 5 is being rewritten..... ON INDEFINITE HOLD
1. Chap 1

Disclaimer: CB is not mine.   
  
Infinite Cold, My Only Hope  
  
_The only dream I ever lived,  
Was ever trusting in you.   
And through your dream and my nightmare  
I still lay my head back down   
To be only yours. _  
  
Chapter One  
  
She could call for him all she wanted, she could wish for him to be alive until her dreams ran dry, she could cry for him until her tears fell empty, and she could curse him until her throat was raw, but he would never come back, he would never walk back through the doors of life again.   
  
She closed her eyes, wanting to see memories that would shift the tides away from his death but all she saw was him, all she saw was his surreal eyes that held a distant pain she would never understand. All she saw was the world she had once lived through those eyes and his dreams that played over her and dragged her to believe in what he was. But who would ever have thought that he had been only a ghost of a love and a hate both meant for the past and not the future that they were supposed to share together?  
  
She sighed as she stared at his tombstone. It was a heavenly white marble, one with tendrils of black swirls reaching to the center where his name was engraved. She touched the letters, searching for a part of him in the rough and smooth surface that was the only thing that stood in his remembrance in a shock of immortality that seemed utterly pointless. But she knew, even before she had begun looking, that she would find nothing but a cold rock beneath her fingers.   
  
Raindrops fell down her fingers, streaked her face like the tears she couldn't cry anymore. They scarred the white marble, the roughly engraved letters like crystals clinging onto one of the only dreamers they had betrayed.   
  
_Why does it always have to rain when I come to see you, Spike? _She wondered to herself as she placed the white rose on his grave. It had been two years since he walked out those doors, out of her life forever, and still he was part of her in her thoughts, nightmares, dreams, and memories. He became more a part of her every time she came to his grave to place a single white rose on his memory that was fading every time she reached to see his eyes in her mind.   
  
She missed him. She missed his snide remarks, his domineering attitude, his pride, his smile, his anger. She missed everything about him. She longed to see him, longed to touch him just one more time and tell him she was sorry for making his whole life hell after he had just escaped from It's fires. She wanted to tell him that she hadn't known what he had went through, but she wished he would have told her. She wanted to cry in his arms and tell him he was the best thing that had entered her life, he was a part of her life she would never forget. She wanted to whisper in his ear he was the friend she never had, back when, then, and never again.   
  
And through it all she hated him with a hate so deep it made her eyes dark and black with rage and emotion she only wished she could hide. Through all the good things she wanted to say to him, she wanted to scream at him. To scream the question why over and over again in his face. Why didn't she understand? Why couldn't he make her understand? Why did he go? Why was he so filled with pride? Why didn't her friendship matter? Why couldn't the Bebop save him from himself? Why couldn't he just forget? Why? Why? Why?   
  
She pounded the soiled ground with fists that meant nothing to an earth that would never die. But she was dying, she was fading with every day she lived and breathed. She was slowly loosing faith in a world that had never wanted her in the first place. She was loosing faith in the people who only knew how to hurt and betray, lie and steal the only thought of love away from a trustworthy heart.   
  
Life was pointless. She knew that. She knew people hated, killed, cried, and never would she understand why. She knew he had been just another of life's mysteries that eluded her, and she stopped caring along time ago. Caring had been pointless when all one got was hurt in return for caring too much.   
  
Two years since she learned that lesson. Two years since she had stopped caring.   
  
She stood, tired, pained too much for words. Every time she visited his bed of eternity she felt weak, not wanting to go on anymore even though she knew she had to. She felt guilty for having the right to live even though he didn't. But she knew that time wanted her, and would have her in the next moments that turned from hours, to days, to months. Soon her grave would be just another pillar in a darkness where no one understood and no one cared.   
  
She stared down at the white petals of her once perfect rose and frowned with disdain as mud streaked it's heavenly glow. She knew that some part of Spike's death had been her fault, that everything that she touched turned black with pain or death. She tainted his life with hers somehow. She didn't know how to keep things perfect. She was like a black seed that pained as well as hurt ten times more than normal people, and to think that she had something to do with his death ... it made her want to cry ten thousand tears and scream to an eternity that hated to be yelled at.   
  
Maybe it was the guilt, maybe it was the sadness, maybe it was the lack of caring but Faye had found herself joining the crime syndicate Fyre a year ago. Wondering, as she stood before the doors, what the hell it was going to be like to be controlled instead of being the one controlling. But the blood there had killed the better part of her. The killing, the hating, the screaming, the fires, the hell that a syndicate was, had killed everything that he had left in her, and now all she knew was pain and how to cause it. She didn't know how to take it away.   
  
She sighed as she stared around the graveyard, the clouds gray and everything else so bleak that she didn't know if she was more indifferent than the world. Lightening flashed once and the stars above peered through the clouds for an instant before settling back down into their foggy blankets. The tombstones around her glared at her, yelling at her for bringing her unholy form among their lifeless breaths. They wanted her gone, out of their midsts that condemned her very soul.  
  
The phone broke the silence of the endless rain and voices as she took her cell phone from her pocket. "Hello?" She asked as she answered, her voice so distant, so tired.   
  
"Julia?" The voice asked.   
  
She felt frozen when she heard that name, the past shaking off her shoulders as she tried to keep her mind focused on the present. She had chosen to call herself Julia, in remembrance of him and in remembrance of the past that she didn't want to forget. After all, his death had started when he fell in love with his that woman, that crazy beautiful goddess Faye wanted to be.  
  
"Yes?" She asked trying to hide her weariness behind a cold wall of emptiness.   
  
"You have a new assignment." The voice was machine like, mechanic as if the words weren't real. "An assassination."   
  
"How much is the pay?" Faye began walking out of the graveyard and down the road that was void of any feeling. The streets were bare, just like her soul. Lights were on in buildings, flickering and mocking the fact that she didn't have any place to go back to but the coldness of her own private world and hell.   
  
"400,000,000 wong. But the pay should not matter because the price of forfeiting this assignment is your life."   
  
"Who is it?" She shifted the phone to the other hand as she reached into her pocket and grabbed the key to her Red Tail. Yeah, she knew the whole sad story. If one refused an assignment the leaders would kill him or her with an injection that would keep them alive for twenty-four hours, hours spent in unbearable agony. But sometimes the missions were suicide assignments anyway and with a pay that high the assignment was most likely of that nature. Pretty damn impossible to come out alive.   
  
"Shin." The voice clipped the name and sliced it into bits and pieces of memories.   
  
Dread filled her as she tried to swallow the lump that formed in her throat. "What Syndicate is he from?" She found her ship parked behind the graveyard's fence as it shifted with memories of the Bebop.   
  
"The Red Dragons."   
  
Faye leaned hard against the cool metal of her ship. She pressed her forehead to the glass and saw silver eyes reflect before her. _Vicious. _Then there was another reflection and she saw Julia. Both their images merged to make her pound the glass with her fist.   
  
"Julia, are you all right?" It was a new voice on the phone, one she sighed to hear.   
  
"Yes, Lexi," She said as she opened her cockpit. "Is the headquarters here on Mars?" She asked as she pulled back her hair and tied it in a pony tail. Her heart beat with a nostalgic breath as she lowered the hatch and began to change into dry clothes. She grabbed the extra pair of jeans and shirt from the bag she had next to her as she hooked her phone up to the speakers in her ship.   
  
"Yes. We have men there already and we also have an appointment set under Caroline Decorum to meet with Mr. Shin. You will go in, meet with him, kill him and get the hell out of there. The soldiers will be there only for back up shall you need it." Lexi sounded worried as she gave her instructions.   
  
Faye smiled as she pulled her shirt over her head. "Don't sound so worried, Lexi. I will make it through this. I always make it through, don't I?" Faye asked trying not to hide her own frustrations. She didn't want to go to the Red Dragons, she didn't want to face an element of the past that she just wanted to forget.   
  
"I have a funny feeling about this, I don't know why," Lexi said softly as Faye started her engine. "I'm sending the coordinates to the Red Tail."   
  
Faye sighed and lay back as her screen blinked on and the engine registered its location and destination. "Thanks, Lexi," she said as she sat foreword and brushed some left over rain off her forehead.   
  
"Be careful, Julia."   
  
Faye didn't reply as she cut off the transmission and headed to the Red Dragon's headquarters. "If I have to die it might as well be my past that kills me," she muttered as she steered her ship to destroy the group he died for.   
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~   
  


"Julia," the soldier said bowing slightly. They stood outside the building with ten others as they watched her shake hands with the lieutenant. He handed her two guns, ten clips and a few grenades. She geared up in the rain hoping that she wouldn't have to use barely any of it.  
  
Cars raced by, not noticing that they stood ready to fight to the death as high buildings loomed over her shoulders showering her in shadows.  
  
"Are you ready? I want to get out without getting killed," she said not with enough conviction. She put her cowboy hat on, one that covered her face with shadows. She tugged her trench coat around her tightly, concealing most of her body and slipped on her sun glasses.   
  
"Yes, ma'am. You have our lives should it come down to that." He bowed again as she walked foreword and stepped across the street through the glass doors of fate. She felt a light headiness, a feeling like she had just stepped into something pleasant yet scary and angry as she walked on high heeled army boots. The people around stared at her for a second before going back to what ever they had being doing before, causing her to sigh in a premature feeling of relief.   
  
Her footsteps were light on a glass floor and they echoed through the large building like fading fragments of time. The walls around her were a deep black marble and the floor below her was a dark gray. _Cheery place, _she thought idly. She walked up to the service counter and smiled a sweet smile to the secretary behind the desk. "I'm Caroline Decorum, here to see Shin." She said slightly worried that everything around her was going to fall apart and she was going to be dead before she got to count to one.   
  
The secretary typed and nodded. "Top floor. Take the elevator," she said motioning to two doors to her right.   
  
She nodded as she walked over to them and pressed the up button, nervous to make a wrong move. She waited only a few seconds before the door opened and she was stepping in, pressing floor 17 as she watched the doors close and seal her fate. Fate was playing with her. She knew it was mocking her, screaming in her face just like she wanted to do back to it but couldn't. But she couldn't care about that now, she couldn't cloud up her objectives with ideal thoughts that made those same objectives pointless.   
  
She couldn't but she was.  
  
The doors opened and she stepped into an office, large enough to fit three houses filled with people. The only things inside was a large desk, a window for a wall, and a plant in the corner. The chair was facing her as she walked inside, feeling more tired and more aged than she could ever remember feeling. Maybe it was time to end it all, maybe it was time to end everything, the pain, the sorrow, the memories that were so confusing and faded she couldn't tell nightmare from the forgotten.  
  
The man sat in the chair, his hands folded as he stared at her with brown intense eyes. "Hello, Miss Decorum." His voice was soft and kind. He seemed so much kinder than he should have been.   
  
She didn't say a word as she reached into her coat and took out a gun, pointing it straight at his chest. "Hi," she said coldly.   
  
He didn't flinch as he sat back and reached his hands under his desk. She knew he had pressed a button for security, and she knew they would be there any second. Her only thought was, _Let them come.   
  
_"Why would you shoot me, Miss Decorum?" He asked as he stood. His voice was so soft... Softness, gentleness, it all couldn't be trusted...  
  
She dropped her gun and kicked it to him. "I don't know." She said as the doors opened behind her and she turned, abruptly kicking whoever was there in the stomach. The person blocked her kick and picked her up by her foot, knocking her hard on the ground as she fell. Then the figure jumped on top of her and pinned her hands above her head not notcing that she didn't even struggle. She knew it was time, and she was ready, she wanted it, she wanted it to end. She hated that it took so long for her to actually realize she really wanted it to end deep inside.   
  
Her hat covered her eyes but the figure threw it off, obviously wanting to see the face of the enemy. Her eyes were closed lightly as she waited for an ounce of pain that would end her life.   
  
"Faye?' A familiar voice asked.   
  
She opened her eyes and almost fainted. "Oh my God," she whispered. "Spike."  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chap 2

Disclaimer- CB is not mine, but I sure as hell wish it was, I mean especially Spike and his whole I''ve-got-this-mysterious-past-but-I-don't-wann-talk-about-it-and-if-you-mention-it-at-ALL-I-will-kick-your-ass kinda attitude. Anyway on with the fic!!!  
  
Note: In the episode of **Honky Tonk Women**, Faye tells Spike that she is a **_Romani_** (Gypsy) and that he is known as a **_Goucho_** (someone who doesn't know which way is up) among the Romanis.   
  
Chapter Two  
  
"You son of a bitch!" She shouted as she freed one of her hands and slapped him hard across the face. Where the anger had come from, where the tears, and the hate had passed from, she didn't know, she didn't care, and she didn't want to find out. But suddenly all the dark thoughts and the indifference of her world wasn't dark or indifferent anymore. It was full of a red hellish anger that made her want to scratch the eyes form his very face!  
  
How dare he be alive after being dead for so long! How dare he allow her to live just one more lie on top of the twenty-million others? Others that he had passed to her through the dream he lived and the lie that had once become her life. And now another dream, another life, and another lie that was lived had all become his fault once more.   
  
For a moment they sat there; his face turned from the force of her slap and her face upturned with indigent anger, purple hair cascading around her face as her green aqua eyes burned with emotion. Time froze, stopped for a moment that never wanted to end. The air cooled, the darkness of the rain seemed brighter, and the cold marble floor underneath her shoulder blades seemed soft.   
  
And then she kicked him off her and he flipped and landed on his feet as she crouched, her hand inside her coat reaching for a gun even as he reached inside his coat for his.   
  
They drew and aimed at the same time.  
  
"Long time no see, Faye Valentine." He smiled through the surprise still on his face as he looked her over from head to foot, taking in her black coat, her army boots, her worn jeans, and her black shirt. She felt his eyes like daggers digging into her soul. Had she changed so much for him to be looking at her so intently?   
  
Then she saw his eyes move to her shoulder where her syndicate badge was sown and she immediately but her hand over it, not ashamed, not scared, but odd with embarrassment.   
  
His eyes narrowed.   
  
Behind her she could hear the door open, and guns click as the rest of the Red Dragon security surrounded her. She heard the seal of her own faith and destiny block her and close in on her for the final kill as she sighed heavily yet without defeat. Behind Spike she saw Shin watching them intently, watching with eyes warm and knowing even as he walked up to them from behind his desk and over to Spike.   
  
His eyes should never had been so warm... But they were and she shivered involuntarily knowing that his eyes were affecting her more than she should have liked. Syndicate leaders _were not_ supposed to have those kind of eyes... She knew eyes like that harbored deciet, that they could possibly hide the secrets dark and rich with blood, guilt and conscience nothing but words to those kinds of eyes...  
  
He whispered into Spike's ear and then turned and looked at her, his face understanding despite her failed attempt to kill him, to kill herself. He shouldn't have understood, but he did, she knew he did. And she hated that something so complicated such as her feelings could be read so easily, so presumably.  
  
Shin's black suit was black and fitting making him gently overpowering as he smiled at her and walked past her, the wind rustling her hair and her nerves as he told those behind her to go and leave the two in peace, the two being Spike and herself. Spike watched his friend intensely, protectively.  
  
Then she heard the rustle of feet and the closing of the doors as everything grew silent.   
  
Faye and Spike still stared at each other, not believing in who and what they were seeing. She studied him intently, wanting to know he was really there, really alive, drinking him in with visual gulps of happiness. The anger, the hate, everything left her as she dropped her other gun to the floor and watched his eyes for some sense of reality, some sense of what wasn't really real in their dark depths. His cheek was red from her slap, his hair slightly mused from their small shuffle, though it had always been a fuzz ball since the day they had met, and his shirt was slightly ruffled from his jeans.   
  
"Spike Spiegel, _Goucho_, is that really you?" She asked smiling sadly at the name she had given him the first time they had met. The thought brought tears to her eyes. How innocent things had been then, their lives once were. Death and killing for the hell of it hadn't been part of the job description back before time.   
  
_"Romani,_" he said smiling with the shared memory of the first time he had met the most difficult woman and tomboy in his life. Then his eyes turned cold as he thought about that syndicate badge on her shoulder.   
  
She saw the change in his expression once more and walked across the room to the large window staring out into the world she refused to be part of when he had walked out of the Bebop and out of her life. She hated him for leaving her, leaving her in a dark part of life that wasn't anything without a dreamer to create a life for her to live. She hated the fact he chose death over her friendship, that he had chosen a sunset for a sunrise, and that he didn't seem too guilty about it even as he stood watching her, watching an element of the past he betrayed.   
  
The world behind an illusion before her fingers as she touched the cold glass and pressed her fingertips to it, reaching out to a rain covered city where children laughed and cried, where people talked about life and stress and family and friends, not what the next assignment was, who was next on the list to murder.   
  
The happiness of just living normally, she wanted it desperately. She needed it now, more than anything. To be normal ... and what _was_ normal? Through the years she found she lost the meaning in the blood, in the killing, in the manipulation of gun shots and tears. Noise and screams that were jumbled with her own thoughts won against the sanity the world thought it possessed but really didn't.  
  
The room was silent, time-stilled as the world went on living around them.  
  
"What happened, Spike?" She asked pressing her forehead to the images blurred by water streaked tears.   
  
"I survived." And the answer was as simple as that, easy and complicated at the same time as she closed her eyes and tried not to think of why or how, only trying to understand what he was saying, that he was before her, was real. That he was truly alive and she hadn't died over night and was just dreaming in her eternal sleep.  
  
"Oh," she said as she sighed and opened her eyes, watching his reflection in the glass as if she wanted to see him in that ghostly form that proved to be more accurate to her than the real thing.  
  
He put his gun away in his coat and walked towards her. "What are you doing here?" He asked as he came up beside her. Out of the whole room he had to pick next to her to stand. She shivered from his closeness and nearness. It felt pointless to be standing next to someone who was supposed to be dead, it felt totally insane and crazy, and yet it was filled with unspoken meaning she wanted to suppress from identifying. She didn't like the feeling in her heart that warmed it and made her feel brand new again.  
  
A feeling that made her feel guilt for all that she did.  
  
"You know what I am doing here. I don't want to explain myself," she said distantly. She turned to him angrily then, tears of despair in her eyes. She knew she had to die, and the worst part was she wanted to die by _his _hand. Any death by his hand would be better than the death dealt by her syndicate. She reached for him and then reached inside his coat pocket retrieving his gun, the cool metal satisfying in her palms.   
  
Her eyes were cold, so dead, so lost as she spoke. "Promise to kill me, Spike. Or I'll kill you," she said softly. "Set me free."  
  
For seconds he stared into her eyes, watching with pity as he gently took the gun from her shaking hands that didn't even try to fight them off. His fingers brushed hers, and to be touched from something that didn't seem real made her mad with regret, hate, happiness and everything in between. But to feel that way with someone who was an enemy was wrong, wasn't right, and she knew she had to stop crying, stop wishing and start thinking again. Stop using her feelings as a crutch, as an excuse not to fight for her life.   
  
But she didn't want life anymore.   
  
She was tired of living lies and then having to start over.   
  
All of it was his fault.  
  
"Faye," he said roughly as he grabbed her by the shoulders, slowly letting her go when he realized he was touching her. "Death is not an escape route, you can't escape life by dying." His voice lost emotion and he turned to stare out the window, his eyes reflecting in the glass.  
  
She shook herself from wanting to hug him, wanting to kiss him, feel him, believe in the past he represented, and didn't he know she wasn't running for an escape route? Besides, he had run in the end, he had chosen death over life, right? Why couldn't she? And she wasn't running, damn it! She was facing the one thing she could face head on and know the outcome. She was facing something she knew for sure she would win, because she knew for sure what would happen if she died- she wouldn't wake up.   
  
"Faye, damn it! Are you even listening to me?" He asked, the same old Spike, persistent in his ideas and thoughts. "Stop being such a pig headed woman and listen to me for once."   
  
He didn't know...  
  
Then the sirens were going off and all she could see was red, all she could hear was the loud ring of danger echoing through the building. And through it all, all she could hear was her heart beat drumming in her ears loudly.   
  
They were coming for her.   
  
She wanted to die and she was going to. It was all a matter of time.   
  
"Spike," she cried as she reached for his hand that held the gun. "Kill me now, please!" She begged as fears raced through her. She wanted the fast death, not the slow one. She wanted protection from as less pain as she could, in her eyes she swore she wasn't running, only choosing the one way she wanted to rest forever if nothing else. She wanted too much.   
  
He moved away, eyes blazing. "Calm the hell down, Faye," he said with a cold calm as he shifted the gun from her reach. He looked concerned but he was also tired and weary. He wished she hadn't come back or hadn't seen him again. She represented everything he wanted to leave behind, and how may more pasts did he have to leave behind to find the right one?   
  
Faye was quick as she grabbed the gun from his hand.  
  
Before Spike could say anything, the doors behind them were kicked open. The sound they made when wood met marble echoed through the room and settled fear in Faye's heart. Her soul stopped living for a second, her breath stopped breathing, and her heart stopped beating to let the waves of reality sink firmly in. Reality she didn't want to face up to.  
  
This wasn't happening like this. It wasn't supposed to happen like this...  
  
In walked the lieutenant that she had greeted earlier. His eyes were deadly as he looked from her to Spike, his eyes eying the gun she held in her hand as she jerked it to Spike's chest. She needed to look like she was going to shoot him, and even as Spike raised his hands in the air she knew that it wasn't going to work.   
  
He was uncertain, his uncertainty was in the air as soldiers stood behind him waiting for orders.   
  
The silence was thick with pregnant violence. Thick and choking as a fog of smoke as each side weighed the other. Faye's nerves teetered on anticipation as the world tipped with nothing but the sound of heart beats in a never ending circle of blood, destiny, death, and life. Which one went first and which one went last didn't matter as long as the cycle repeated itself to die and to live for one that only knew about being and nothing more.  
  
Spike was the first to move.   
  
His knife was out so fast and in the lieutenant's eye before anyone could think. Time froze and shivered in a river of blood that it knew all too well, as a dying scream echoed too late. Spike pounced at the others before they could react as their leader crumpled to the floor screaming for mercy, whithering with pain God chose to ignore.  
  
Gun shots rang out and the glass behind Faye broke and shattered, covering her in crystal rain that burned, cut, and ate at her skin as she covered her head with her hands. She stood and pointed the gun at her own soldiers and began firing, shooting, spilling blood, and the worst thing out of all of it was she was actually enjoying it all. She loved the sight of blood, dark and shinning as her gun shot and caused the red rivers to flow. What had she become? She wondered as she fired and felt bullets hit her in her body, cut her deep with scarless wounds of death. But pain didn't matter, pain was just the paradox of weakness and weakness was nothing but a feeling sought to destroy.  
  
She wanted death. Couldn't have it, so dealt it out like candy. And she didn't care.   
  
Spike had gotten hold of a gun as he shot and killed, his face intent, his eyes dark with a blood lust so deep that she hoped her eyes were not the same. His hands faltered as he kicked, punched, broke bones, snapped necks, and shot his enemies, her friends, and killed them while she watched, gun pointed, gun ready, but heart hesitating with every beat.   
  
She couldn't do it, they were all her family in a way. Weren't they? But they wanted to bring her back for her to suffer, wasn't that it? They wanted her back so she would die and someone new would take her place in life that lost and gave too much for it's own good.   
  
Then one soldier got through and though she shoot him in the forehead he managed to shoot her in the leg.  
  
For a moment she was paralyzed. She'd shot someone, she killed someone, she hurt someone. Who was she? And why did she have second thoughts on killing? She'd been killing for so long...   
  
She faltered when reality of pain hit her leg as she flew backwards. Spike caught her movement out of the corner of his eye to slow and he turned and grabbed for her too late. Hands reaching for nothing, feet and legs running in vain.   
  
She was falling backwards, falling into a nothingness void that would end with a crack on the ground.   
  
Her immortality would be a crack in cement she thought bitterly as she fell and let herself float in the air, the wind driving past her as she looked from where she fell and say Spike's face scream her name above her. His face mixed with memories, what was real and what wasn't? What was there and what wasn't? What mattered and what didn't?  
  
It seemed like she was falling forever, her tears, her memories running past her as her hear flew over he cheeks and tickled her nose. Clouds growing farther away beckoned for her, waited with outstretched hands for her to bounce off the concrete below her and come to them.  
  
Then she hit, she felt the impact hit her as she felt her world die in pain all too quick enough to be death.   
  
Then everything went black and all she knew was dreams. Hopes she could never hope to even hope in dreamless daytime where nothing but reality was real. And even that was fake to her.   
  
She stopped thinking then because she couldn't think anymore with nothing but coldness to hold her in the darkness of her nightmares.   
  
**NOTE: Short chapter, forgive me, writer's block.... Be gentle on the reviews, please. I didn't have time to read over this, so I'll read over it later. Forgive the mistakes. **  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chap 3

_Disclaimer: Cb is not mine.   
  
A/N- sorry it took so long for me to write..... writer's block, ya know, I can't think of anything to write about and I have no idea where this story is going kinda thing. On with the story!!!_  
_  
Er... beginning quotes are all mine if you're wondering...  
  
Dee-chan mentioned a mailing list...if you want to be on it, state so in your next review and give me your email. Or if you want to you can email me ay Bell0110@aol.com. =)  
_

  
  
_When I look into the stars  
I see your face staring back at me  
But no matter how hard I reach for you  
You're only there in memory...._  
  


Chapter Three  


_  
_  
  
Sitting, tired, not wanting to live...  
  
Living against will... Dying for the sake of breathing.   
  
Couldn't take away the pain, couldn't make the monsters go away, couldn't hide the nightmares from reality, couldn't fade the impact of memories too hard, too cold to call a life. Couldn't stop from letting one more life mix with his, couldn't prevent one more casualty on his already guilt-filled soul.   
  
_Damn._  
  
No longer a man, but a lifeless shell filled with a memory of a dream once lived, and the distant ideals of nightmares never forgotten.  
  
He sat, his head in his hands as he tried to forget, tried to leave everything he felt in the stillness of his soul and heart beats. Eyes stared onto the white floor of the Red Dragon's infirmary as feet rustled back and forth, here and there, saving lives, rescuing souls from the depths of hell, because inevitably that was where they were all going. Heaven didn't have room for the murderers the Red Dragon soldiers and agents were.   
  
Heaven didn't accept _his kind_.   
  
Damn the angels that didn't want them. He didn't need them, right?   
  
Memories flashed over his eyes. Faye smiling, Jet laughing, Ed sleeping, Ein barking. He had wanted to forget them. Wanted to wish he never ruined their lives with his own, tainted them somehow with the darkness that always seemed to find him wherever he ran.   
  
He'd been running for so long...  
  
It had all been just a dream then, though, hadn't it? That other life he'd only tasted for a few years had only been part of a dream that wasn't who he was. The Red Dragons defined him now, not some country bumpkin ship and crew that mattered more to him then he wanted to admit.  
  
He wanted a fucking cigarette, but saw the no smoking sign to his left and sighed as he put his elbows on his knees and stared back down at the white tiled ground again.   
  
He wanted very little in life and was deprived a cigarette when he needed it most. Life just didn't seem quite fair as he let his mind drift back to stable and focused thoughts that he wanted nothing to do with.   
  
Life didn't just _seem_ fair, life _wasn't_ fair. Life had deprived him of more than a cigarette, it had deprived him of friendship, it had deprived friendship to the ones who wanted it more than most. Then he wanted to hit himself for being so vain as to think he had even mattered to them, the Bebop and its awkward crew. But he _knew_ he had mattered, they knew he had mattered, everyone had seemed to realize he had mattered but yet he still he refused, even now, the thought that he had or ever did.   
  
He didn't want to _care. _He didn't want anyone to matter to him and he didn't want to matter to anyone. The pangs of loss were too great when they came for their pay and due, and after Julia... He couldn't take that kind of loss again.   
  
He was experiencing it again despite his effort not to.   
  
_Faye..._  
  
He had wanted to escape the Bebop crew's friendship, their love, their happiness, and their memories. When he died, or when they thought he died, he had found the perfect escape route into a death that never wanted him, that expelled him back into life every time he knocked on its doors. But he had only thought he'd put the Bebop life behind him and it had done the same. He only guessed that he'd forgotten what is was like to have friends such as Jet and the crew. And just when he had become a perfect soldier, a perfect agent for murderer, Faye had come popping back into his life ringing the bells of everything he didn't have, didn't think he _wanted_, didn't think he _needed_ anymore. Things a _soldier_ didn't _want_, didn't _need_ in a life of crime so dark that it could only belonged to a damned soul.  
  
But when he had stared into her eyes.... He'd believed in friendship and trust again...  
  
He had _wanted_.   
  
He had _needed_.  
  
He shook his head.   
  
_Damn, woman. Got an attitude the size of Neptune. Can't trust her kind to just leave you alone. You leave 'em on a doorstep and they coming back with a gun ready to blow your whole fucking life away.  
  
_He couldn't trust her just like he could trust in himself anymore.   
  
He could trust in Shin, he could trust....  
  
Who the hell was he trying to fool?   
  
It was all different from Faye's kind of trust, from Jet's, and Ed's... He knew his relationship with the Bebop crew was different from his relationship with the Red Dragons. But only in the Bebop could he feel truly free; trustworthy and carefree, and only in the Red Dragons could he be truly himself; killer and hater.   
  
Why couldn't he have the both of best of both worlds?   
  
_God damn it all. Why do I have to think so damn much?_  
  
His hands looked different as he looked at them, tried to find who he was inside the skin that chained him to time. Were those the same hands that had killed, loved, and betrayed?   
  
_Faye.._  
  
Were they the same hands that had failed to protect her from a fate he lived through time and time again? Were they the same hands that knew love, lost love, and killed love just for the sake of feeling the love that he could never really have but only see?   
  
"Mr. Spiegel," a voice said as a pair of white shoes entered his vision in front of him.   
  
He looked up, eyes weary, muscles sore, wounds frosted over with stiffness he didn't really care about at the moment. A woman with black hair and violet eyes stared down at him, her whole demeanor warm and patient. "The woman who was brought in last night has just come out of surgery."   
  
_Has it only been one night? I swear it felt like a thousand years, _he thought distantly._   
  
_"She has various wounds. She had a spinal injury-"   
  
He waited to hear the word paralyzed.   
  
"..which we were able to fix. As you may have guessed she has more than a hand full of broken bones, and a skull injury. Through everything she'll be fine, that new technology that cryogenically heals such severe cases has more than come in handy in this case."   
  
He sighed with relief.   
  
"But..."  
  
There was always a _but.   
  
_"She lost her right eye, we had to replace it with an artificial one." The doctor smiled and offered her hand to help him to his feet as if she just told him he was getting a new car.   
  
He felt frozen in time. Felt as if he wasn't real, wasn't really there standing and wobbling a bit from the faintness he felt from his own loss of blood. He'd almost lost her... And why was Faye so important when he didn't want her to be?   
  
She held an element of the past he had thought he'd never have again. She represented the happiness that obligation didn't smother in a word of terrorism and crime. She was the world he couldn't have anymore...  
  
He owed the Red Dragons too much... He owed Shin too much to want that other world.  
  
"She's in a coma right now. She'll be up soon, though." The doctor lead Spike down a hallway filled with other pateints moaning and groaning, and other visitors with the same thoughtful and hpeless look in thier eyes. He peeled his eyes away from the others around him.  
  
His footsteps echoed with his heart as he tried to calm himself down. _Stop acting as if you actually care about the damn woman, _he scolded himself as the doctor stopped walking. "Here she is, Mr. Spiegel."   
  
He peered into the room in front of him. Faye lay in a blanket of innocent white as purple hair caressed her face. Her bruises, scratches, and stitches didn't seem to matter at the moment as Spike felt himself sigh in relief. He hadn't truly believed that she was alive when the doctor had told him, but when he saw her...   
  
Faye was _alive!  
  
_He felt a pang of pain in his own eye as he stared at the patch over her's.  
  
"I'll come back in an hour or so to give her some medication. Bye." The doctor walked away as he walked over to Faye's bed. The room was shallowly decorated, a single window next to the bed as machines beeped and chirped, droning in his ears as his heart slowed, his breathing decreased to a normal rate.   
  
Light from the moon illuminated her pale face and gave everything a silver glow, and Faye, she took to it as if that glow had always been there, as if it belonged there around her face, around her shoulders and sparkling off purple strands that held splashes of blood he refused to acknowledge.   
  
He felt his body relax as it finally let go of the stress, the worry, and the anxiety he'd been feeling in the waiting room.   
  
A moan escaped her dry lips as Faye shifted, eye brows knitted as pain flashed through her features and then settled calmly back down into a look a vulnerable sleep.   
  
Why the hell did he feel so guilty for her present position?   
  
He sat down next to her in the chair next to the window and watched her, standing like a guardian angel even if he was powerless to stop the nightmares from catching her while she slept.   
  
He didn't want to be anyone's fucking guardian angel, especially hers.   
  
But he knew whether he liked it or not, he was there and he'd be watching over her protecting her from reality even if he couldn't protect her from her nightmares.   
  
  
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  


  
  
She walked into the room, the darkness greeting her with a chilling cold that made her shiver. Her brown eyes were tired, sad as her long brown hair blew in a slight draft behind her. The papers in her hands rustled slightly as she closed the doors behind her and sighed heavily.   
  
The desk in front of her was outlined by a blue sky, dark with the night's caress as stars played over the darkness with sprinkled laughter. The large black leather chair stood away from her as if the person sitting in it was ashamed of her sadness.   
  
"Lexi, what have you brought for me?" He asked.   
  
Lexi felt tears burn her eyes as she suppressed a sob. She cleared her throat from the thickness in it and took a deep breathe. _Damn tears. _"The status report of the last assignment." She walked towards the desk, her black booted feet clicking on the floor below her even when she couldn't see it in the darkness around her.   
  
_A spaceless void..._  
  
A hand reached for the papers in her hand. She handed them over without hesitation.   
  
Silence as the words were read and digested.   
  
"All of them died?" His voice was monotone without emotion.  
  
"Yes," Lexi said turning away. Julia flashed over her vision as tears blurred it. She hadn't deserved to die, she hadn't deserved to disappear off a world that had treated her so unfairly. Surely in Julia's past there had been something worth living and something worth finding. Lexi felt a pang of regret for her friend. _And we were supposed to stage a coup together a month from now, _she thought even as she stood on enemy grounds.  
  
"Send another team tomorrow night. I want you to lead the attack." His voice was more than indifferent.  
  
Lexi stared for a moment, hatred filling her soul. Didn't he see that the assignment was suicide?! Then she nodded and said a whispered 'yes sir' before she walked out the door, the slight click echoed through the room. Her with held emotions staging the cool air with rage.  
  
"You are wasting your time, the Red Dragons are too prepared to be over thrown by a planned over night battle," a voice said to him as he turned and focused his eyes on the papers that had betrayed him. He hadn't read them, only guessed the outcome of the already failed assignment.  
  
"I know."   
  
"Then why do you do send our soldiers on this suicide assignment?"   
  
His smile was more then evident. "Because I'm bored."  
  
  
  
  
A/N- Hope you liked it, it was alot of BS, and you all prolly want something actaully relevent and intresting. I'm really sorry, I have the biggest writer's block right now. As always I DIDN"T HAVE TIME TO LOOK THIS OVER!! So please forgive the mistakes.   
~VT~  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chap 4

Disclaimer; Cowboy Bebop is not mine.   
  
A/N- Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I have been busy trying to rewrite this, then I had vacation, then I had finals, and on top of that I have two other fics.... sooooo here's the next chapter. Oh by the way,,,, the hell with trying to rewrite this!!!!  
Also- in the last chapter, Faye was portryaed as Poker Alice. I TOOK THAT OUT!!! **_FAYE IS NOT POKER ALICE!!!_**  
REMINDER- Lexi thinks Faye's name is Julia...  
  
  
Chapter Four  
  
Tight smile, soft eyes, and a broken heart reflected in brown pools so deep that they could have been called the universe and been defined a starless sky. "Can you bring her back to me?" Shin's voice echoed off into somewhere passed darkness never making it to the light in the other's eyes.   
  
She only nodded, her silence a virtue and a curse to him. He was left alone with his own defenses, his own ideas and emotions. He was left vulnerable and he didn't like to feel that way, no one did. "There's a price?" He knew everything came with a price, sometimes the price so high there was no point in which to even fall from, it simply was too high to have an end. But he would pay any price...  
  
"A high price." She spoke, voice melting with the blackness around them. She laid her words out with certainty that wasn't anything but confidence, an air that she knew exactly what the hell she was doing.   
  
"What is it?" He could feel his heart beating through his black suit.   
  
"We want Faye Valentine." Her words stopped the silence that lingered somewhere between now and then, past and present.   
  
"Faye?" He asked dumbly as if the name hadn't fully registered in his mind.   
  
"For your girl, we want ours." She said softly as she reached out and touched his cheek, her fingers caressing, her touch cold. It had been warm once, like everyone had once been, like everyone had began as a small child, warm with innocence. A beginning, a time where love wasn't cold and hate wasn't blistered and childhood wasn't anything but bliss, bliss he laughed at now, but so strongly wanted to feel once again.   
  
He moved away.   
  
"Do you accept or deny?" She asked, voice turning to ice as shivers slipped down his spine and forced him to stand rigid. Darkness covered what he hid beneath brown eyes.  
  
What he wanted now was something he had wanted most in the whole entire world ever since his family fell apart throughout out his life, ever since his father died, his mother was killed, and his older brother was shot. What he wanted most was more important than some woman he barely even knew.   
  
But Spike knew her...  
  
What would he say?  
  
Did he even care what Spike thought?   
  
No, not really. At least not on the issue at hand. And what was the issue at hand? Shouldn't he be worrying about the Red Dragons and the attack they had just undergone? But he couldn't think about that, the important, the obvious, wasn't something he wanted to concentrate on. He was close, finally so close to seeing her eyes look back at him, her smile reflecting his happiness...  
  
He was getting too damn sentimental... Happy endings weren't something he was accustomed too, but he wanted to believe that his ending would be beautiful, that being reunited with her would mean an ending and a beginning that gave him meaning once more... that took away the guilt he lived with everyday in the back forgotten regions of his memory that seethed through into the present and made him alone in a dark void only he could know and escape.  
  
"Fine." He replied trying not to think of the consequences and turned from her stare as he walked out of the room and made his way to the Red Dragon's infirmary. He had a girl to get, in exchange for his.   
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~   
  


_"Faye!"   
  
She felt her body turn around as the world around her became clear, her eyes opening as if awakening from a long nap that wasn't really a nap but a sleep so deep that she wanted to almost call it death. Her purple hair flew over her face as the wind carried its silent whispers to her ears and stroked her pale cheeks as she stood in a sun filled street, the houses on both sides of her seemed just as warm as the sunlight glowing over her arms as she uncrossed them and waved to young girl running down the black street towards her. Honey blonde hair, straight and long like golden tendrils of spun gold, flew through the air as black eyes flashed with an unearthly glow of deep thought and concentration as she smiled through the brightness of the day.   
  
"Jasmine!" Faye heard herself cry out childishly happy. She felt something in her heart, felt something shake her and melt a coldness inside so dense pieces of ice shifted in her, made her smile with a fresh feeling of renewal.   
  
Jasmine stopped, her breathe caught, her eyes bright despite their color. Her cheeks glowed with a child's innocent, her small hands pulled back the hair that hung on her shoulders like a golden cape. "How are you doing today?" Jasmine asked, as she let her hair fall, yellow sparkles sparking off the sun rays.   
  
Faye shrugged. "I'm ok," she said sighing. But her voice seemed to carry on longer as she tried to focus her thoughts on something... She was forgetting something important, there was something about where she was, what she was feeling, who she was seeing that was out of place...  
  
"Are you all right?" Jasmine asked, her voice splitting into two different forms, indestinguishable but crystal clear. Faye felt something pull at her, felt her whole being shift in and out of place as her hair flew around her face, felt the wind warn, scream to her, words that went unheard.   
  
Jasmine didn't seem to notice as Faye's hair flew around her face, her clothes melting into her flesh as her flesh melted into the background of the houses, the cars, the street, the perfect world. The other girl laughed, kept on talking, kept on rambling about her brother, Ios. But her words were fading in Faye's ears, they were fading just like the wind as new sounds played over her ears, the world reverting to all black, all merciless hurt, the cold pieces in her heart covering her soul once more, the light of innocence dying away. Words echoed around her, through her, became her as she tried to turn from them, tried to run.  
  
"Faye, you really are a pain..."   
  
"When angels are cast from heaven they have no choice but to become devils..."   
  
"You're just worried that they'll abandon you so you distance yourself from the whole thing..."   
  
"Where does the lie end and the truth begin?"  
  
The last voice echoed in her head... It was her own, it was harder, colder, older than she was used to. But it was her, it was who she was, it was all she was... A lie? She couldn't believe that, but ribbons of yesterdays began to scatter around her in the dark, they spun around her, taunted the woman she was, was yesterday, last night, the day before, fifty years before she died and relived something she didn't know the truth about, still didn't understand...  
  
She reached for a glimpse of the past, reached for it like it was the last thing she ever knew as the ribbons completely covered her, moved around her like a thick blanket that held no light, no purpose but to simply be there, holding, caressing. She touched a black ribbon... Black eyes, cold as winter, hard as stone, hair silver, face wrinkled with hate flashed over her vision. Vicious... Was that his name? She couldn't be sure, nothing was certain in a pool where ribbons of what she was played with her mind, over her body as if she were a memory herself, drifting to find its place in the past that seemed to suddenly scatter into fragments of broken glass.   
  
She touched a golden ribbon. Golden hair, sea green eyes, sad, soft, hurt, loving... Julia. She knew the name, couldn't remember anything about the girl though, not one thing though her face, her name rang familiar all throughout her body.   
  
She touched three others- a child, a man with a beard, a dog. She saw them, knew their names, but couldn't remember who they were, how she knew them, what they were like, why she knew them. She felt memories eluding her as her fingers searched through the dark for more glimpses at what she didn't understand. The ribbons were moving around her and it took her a minute to understand they were leaving her.   
  
She grasped for them, reached for them like she couldn't hold onto anything else because they were leaving her faster, angrier, scared that they would be caught in her palm and trigger something that would bring meaning to everything she saw. Before long she felt the coldness of what being lost without a home, without a past or a future, meant. It meant being alone with nothing but the person in the mirror, even the reflection a stranger to the owner of loneliness.   
  
A blue ribbon floated in front of her, her green eyes glowing with one last hope, one last cold dream that was fading to the frozen wasteland she felt her soul had become. She touched the blue single ribbon as darkness cascaded over her shoulders. She saw two different colored eyes, saw green hair, saw a smile, a frown, a grimace, a snarl. Saw sadness, saw loneliness, saw pain, saw hate, saw deadly calm, and cold sarcasm. She felt, she heard, she smelled everything at once, knew his name, knew his voice, forgot the reason she remembered him so strongly, forgot the reason she hated him, loved him, hurt over him all at the same time.   
  
Then his image faded. And she shivered because without memories to warm her with security she was left vulnerable to the night she floated in, the starless void silver with winter as the cold winds blew over an abandoned soul that yearned to know what was happening.   
  
_

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  


  
Her brown hair floated in the cold air, a black trench coat with a symbol of fire surrounding a black tiger glowed in the dying sunlight on her shoulder as she tried to see the stars for what they were. Not things to be wished on, or jewels to be admired, but deadly eyes that watched and waited for the fate of everything they over saw. They glared down from their high posts as the clear night allowed them shelter under darkness' wings, the buildings liquid ice in the moonlight that was seeping over the sunlight and playing its cold fingers over the street, the windows of the Red Dragon's headquarters that loomed before her.   
  
_Fall, _she dared the glistening eyes of demons loved by angels. _Fall on this place and see if I won't fight back. _All her life Lexi never believed in fate or destiny, she believed in what the world was, and if destiny ever existed she swore she would not be part of it. She swore that she would not be part of a plan already decided and if that in itself meant fulfilling her destiny then it didn't matter, she'd find another way to out do fate.   
  
She fought the wind, the wind that moved around her now, slipped through her hair, past her face, past her body, and disappeared behind her. Wind that could not be seen, but felt, and understood. Fate that was there around her, unseen, but felt, understood.  
  
She thought of Julia, thought of their conversations, their friendship based on two factors. Both had had a past forgotten, and both had been hurt by the future. They had both been two souls wondering in the present, no past to stand on and no future to reach for, nothing but the now to decide what was to happen yesterday and what would happen tomorrow. They had befriended because they had no one else to trust, they had no one else to turn to but another stranger, another chance to take on life, another roll of the dice, perhaps the last one they would ever take.   
  
Who better to understand than someone who didn't know what happened but understood anyway? To hell if they were a complete stranger, bonds of the deepness of feelings and understanding ran farther in the soul, stronger in the heart, than any history did.   
  
"We're ready for our attack, Lexi," a voice said behind her as her agents stood on top of the building opposite their destination behind their leader.   
  
She shivered in the full impact of night, clouds gone to sleep with the sun as the stars fully awakened crowning the moon with cold warmth. Was she to die now? Was that how destiny was going to kill her? Throw her away as if her battle against them made no difference, made no effort to solve any problems, prove any solutions correct? She clutched the gun in her pocket, felt something, maybe hate, rise, felt rage that destiny was taking control over life, the life she had always thought she owned completely. Her brown eyes burned, not with tears, but something just as deep as the salty scars that had found a home in her heart and not her cheeks that never became wet with them. She had wanted so much to make the decision of when she was to die, when she was to end what she never had... A life. She had wanted a past, and when she looked back she knew she had never had time to make one for the future.   
  
How stupid it had been to join the syndicate Fyre... But she couldn't remember ever joining it, she had always been there...  
  
But she shook her head, not wanting to think about the things she couldn't explain, couldn't answer. There wasn't any more time left to answer what was unsolved... Too late to care about past indifference that wouldn't be able to change because it had all been set in stone. She knew the Red Dragons were her death, and suddenly death was just another obstacle fate threw at her despite everything else. It was just another obstacle to over come, another place to pass before she finally said good-bye and wrote that in stone as well.  
  
"Let's go," she said to the men behind her. She stood against the night, the wind blowing harder, whipping her hair over her face as her coat flew out behind her, her form outlined against the sky before her, the buildings glowing around her as she watched from the shadows of her mind, the chaos she knew she was conducting, run through the course of time and hide in the grass of deception and rivalry.  
  
_Time to say good-bye and meet with Julia on the other side... And for you Julia I will kill Spike Spegiel, the one you thought dead, but the one I know to be alive. _Lexi smiled to herself, knowing that before she died, if she died, she would go after Spike Spegiel, the man who hurt Julia, who her friend always talked about with such hate and such vengeance. The man who had walked out on her and died. But Lexi had known that Spike had been alive, she had known and she had not stopped time to tell Julia her dead man was alive. No, Lexi hadn't had enough emotion to tell Julia that life wasn't death to the man that protected the Red Dragons' leader. Ever since the Red Dragons lost the Van and shifted power to Shin, everyone knew a man by the name of Spiegel was protecting him...  
  
For every tear Spike had made Julia cry in her sleep, Lexi would seek with a feeling of redemption.  
  
She walked to the edge of the roof top, looked down at the busy cars and ships flying by, the lights playing over her features as she tried to understand how people lived in a day where blood and murders painted the TV, the news, like decorations on a birthday cake. She tried to forget about her death, about the suicide she was leading her men into, because behind everything, she really didn't want to die.  
  
For the first time in a long time, Lexi was scared.   
  


~ ~ ~ ~ ~  
  


He stared at her face, stared at her as she groaned and shivered, and cursed himself for being by her side. He'd been there by her side ever since he brought her in and it was almost six thirty. He'd be damned if he knew why the hell he was with her, but he felt a sense of responsibility for her, even though he had none, and also felt that in return for his service she would get the hell out of his life when she awoke. The sun was setting in the window behind, the moonlight settling in, soothing with pale light as it played on a white floor and over his weary shoulders, as if it wanted him to sleep away the hope that Faye would be waking up anytime soon.   
  
He took out another cigarette, wasted ones littered the floor at his feet as he lit it with his lighter, the flame igniting his features with evil fatigue for an instant as the flame played on the end of the new cigarette. He inhaled deeply as if the smoke could calm the fact that he'd been thinking of the past all day, the past he had wanted to forget. He turned to her, angry that she showed up in his new life, the calmness he had searched for so long vanishing. "Damn you, Faye!" he hissed as his tired eyes burned red, the light dim above him as she knitted her eyebrows in some sort of pain. He sighed as he sat back, knowing she couldn't hear, knowing she wouldn't care even if she could. "You really are a pain," he said as if finally realizing it, but knowing he always knew he didn't like her even from the beginning.   
  
He sat back in his chair, smoked, yawned and then ran his fingers through his hair as if raking away all the thoughts in his head, all the random ideas he didn't want to hear his mind play over and over again anymore.   
  
Suddenly there was a huge explosion and the whole building shook with a certain vengeance of what lives were taken and what lives were spared in the day Faye had lived against Death's wishes.  
  
Then the alarms went off like shrieks of the undead.   
  
The lights in the room went to a dark red and began to blink, shadows playing in the firelight of human war, the sirens screeching, piercing his ears with flashing awareness, his silent reverie of thoughts that he had only craved to be disrupted but not like this.   
  
He was up from his chair in an instant, the chair clattering to the floor, his eyes darting from the door to Faye's sleeping form in the bed, his heart beating as he thrust the door open and saw the red lights echoing on and off through the air as the siren impaled his ears. Chaos, that was what he found, people running under a red glare to the nearest exit, as the sirens screamed for them to remain calm in a high pitched volume of panic. Doctors directed patients calmly, their eyes filled with terror, their feelings of fear clear and undeniably unstable to those around them as some patients began to cry.   
  
Screams... He heard them all his life...  
  
He slammed the door shut and reached into his holster, pulled out a gun and looked out the window, his eyes narrowed as he stared out into the night, the blinking red of Hell behind him. There was no way he was walking in that hall full of people, he'd never get through. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialed a number and waited.   
  
"Shin?"   
  
He paused as he waited for an answer, an answer that prolonged for eternity.   
  
"What the hell is going on?" He asked as he stared out the window, the sirens blaring in his head as he tried to listen. His face glowed with some sort of emotion, some sort of feeling that he couldn't place that shifted his eyes from the outside to Faye's face, so fresh and young, so full of pain as the patch over her eye tinted red on and off with the vengeance of the Devil. Purple strands looked black with shadows as if darkness was reaching for her every time the lights flicked off.  
  
"We're under attack again? What the fuck are these people thinking?" He asked as he turned back to the window and lifted it open with such force the glass shattered like fragments of hope. His eyes narrowed as he searched for an escape out the window, red flashing as the intensity of what was happening intensified. He turned his back, finding no way to climb safely down.   
  
"Well, I've got to go, make sure you get your ass to some place safe," Spike muttered as he slammed the phone shut and went to Faye, lifting her onto his shoulders swiftly, the wires breaking from her IV, her oxygen tube ripping from her nose as he forcefully picked her up and headed towards the door.   
  
He knew the whole place could be falling down in explosions any minute...  
  
"Hold it right there," a voice said coldly as a small click of a gun echoed along side the siren.   
  
Spike reached for the door knob.   
  
A loud shot rang through the room as Faye fell to the floor, her hair falling over her face as she landed with a groan, Spike dropping to one knee as he gasped in pain, blood falling down his right leg, piercing the floor with tainted ruin. He turned his head and looked up at his enemy as he grasped his wounded leg, eyes dark with pain and anger.   
  
She stood, long brown hair beautifully straight, her brown eyes narrowed with a deep depression of what was happening, what she was doing, and what she was going to do. Her long fingers grasped a gun with ease as she looked down at him coldly, her whole stare penetrating as she smiled with sudden cold, the red lights playing over her face, the siren deafening to his ears. She had come through the open window...  
  
He reached for his gun he had dropped.  
  
Another shot rang out.   
  
Blood flowed like a never ending river. It dripped from his fingers as he grasped his shoulder.   
  
"Don't move, Spike Spiegel." She said softly as she stepped foreword, black boots clicked against the no longer white floor, her footsteps echoing in his mind as it raced for ideas.   
  
The sirens stopped, the red lights still flashed, and screams, and gunshots rang throughout the building, behind the closed door behind him. "How do you know my name?" He asked half heartily as pain erupted through his body, his arm throbbing, his leg screaming as he moved to block Faye with his body ever so slowly. Blood smeared the white floor, reached for her purple locks spilled neatly like liquid tanzinite.   
  
The woman smiled. "The woman your Red Dragons killed the day before was a friend of mine. She talked of the green haired, multicolored eyed man a lot. She hated him, she wanted him dead, but he was already dead. Or so she thought. Funny, I knew your name the instant she told me it. But I didn't want to hurt her by telling her the most wanted man on the top of her syndicate list was one she obviously had strong feelings for." The woman smiled with disdain, as Spike shook his head with surprise.   
  
"Faye...?" He muttered, glancing behind him just a little. She hadn't noticed who was behind him...  
  
"Don't move!" The woman in front him said coldly.   
  
He stopped, and slowly moved his head to face her again, his eyes growing small as he looked her in the eyes unafraid. "What the hell do you want me to do? Take back what happened? You wouldn't understand even if I explained to you what happened between Faye and I." He said muttering half from tiredness, half from anger and rage that he was trapped in a corner.   
  
"Faye?" The woman said the name as if it were foreign. "It wasn't a girl named Faye, it was a girl named Julia." The woman looked confused for an instant then repositioned her gun that had wavered and smiled slickly. The name Julia echoed through his mind, caused memories to fly around his head like unwanted butterflies strutting their beautiful colors found on wings he'd never have for himself. "Doesn't matter, now does it, Spike? She's dead, and so are you." The woman took another step towards him.   
  
Spike stared at her head on, unafraid.   
  
The woman put pressure on the trigger.   
  
There was small cry and then a strong grip clutched his shoulder.   
  
He turned and saw Faye starring at the woman's gun with a single wide eye, fear encircling her green depths, and for a second he was confused. Faye, scared, of a gun? It didn't add up in his mind for a second. When he turned back to the woman, the gun had been dropped, brown eyes stared with shock, and tears as she slowly walked towards Faye, anger heating something deeper than fear. Caution that what she was seeing, wasn't real.  
  
"Julia?"   
  
Faye stared at the woman and then at Spike, shook her head and let go of his shoulder as she backed up against the wall, tears hysterically falling down her face mixing with streaked purple hair as sobs ripped her throat, fear prickling her features as she whispered words that stopped both hearts that watched. "Who are you two?!"   
  
  
  
  
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A/N- its late, so the mistakes are mistakes on my part. God, sorry I had to time to look this over, I'm so sorry. And also I am so sorry I ranted!!! **^_^::**  
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	5. Chap 5

Title- Infinite Cold  
  
Author- Lia Midsummer  
  
Comments- Yeah ::puts hand behind head and sweat drops.:: I've been out of it for a while. I know I know, but writer's block is a bitch ya know? Well, anyway, this story has gotten good reviews, but how many of ya all are going to read it now that its really really out of date? I hope a few of you are. Anyways, just want to apologize, I've been busy and away for the past couple of months and I've been itching to write. Needless to say I'm half on writer's block still and half held up with ideas. Well here goes nothin... enjoy :) Forgive this chapter if it leaves things out or anything that had been in the last chapters.. its been awhile, ya know.  
  
Chapter Five  
  
Her heart flew from her chest like a wild bird flying for its life. Red lights illuminated the forms before her, shadows, bright red wisps of reality. Oh God, she could feel her head spinning with the sounds of the sirens, the sound of chaos, the sight of the blood that dripped from a shadowed hand that was more a stranger to her than anything else in the room. Blood- just the sight of it made her head spin, her heart flutter, her stomach drop as if she had been on a roller coaster and was still feeling the after effects of winding upside down.   
  
"Faye, cut the crap," he said- the shadowed figure with bright red blood, his eyes glowing even when the lights blinked away. Two different colored eyes, like a demon...  
  
She stared up at him, her back pressed to the wall, her eye wide with fright as darkness shunned the other. She panicked then, screaming, not knowing what else to do. Where the hell was she! Who stood before her with blood on his hands! Why didn't she have any answers! God her eye, she couldn't see out of it! Was she blind? Why? How? Her head was a turmoil, and she grasped her head with both hands, pain erupting in her skull as she tried to figure out the questions from the answers, the memories from the past.   
  
Then the world was going black and the sirens were fading and all she could hear were the sounds of her screams turned into whimpers louder than the images in her head.   
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
The world seemed to stop, stand still. Time didn't matter, he didn't care, and she lay there in a crumpled heap of a woman who was only an image of who she once had been. Purple hair like silk covering the bruised face and the bruised soul that had stared out from a single pale green eye. She looked like a fallen angel, but red was around her, blinking her in and out of focus, and he damned the lights. He didn't want to loose her to darkness. He'd lost so much to darkness, and he hated Faye enough to care if he lost her as well.   
  
Who are you? Her voice ricochet off his mind. Words, just words, she was just confused, she knew who he was. She caused him so much trouble, she had to know!  
  
"Julia?" the woman behind him asked the unconscious figure distantly. He could feel his blood heat, feel the old pain rip out of his soul as her name rang in his heart, rang all the old memories he thought he had left in yesterday and dematerializing the present. Blood, down his fingers, down his leg, to the floor, on the tile like her blood had dripped to the concrete. Memories, too many, too painful, like flying birds gazing down at him, watching and waiting for him to fall, to die, to give up. But he couldn't, he wanted to, but he couldn't.   
  
Then everything, all the thoughts he had had about wanting what he couldn't have back fired and he felt himself go cold. It didn't matter what he wanted because the one thing he wanted most was something he could never have again. She was the distant dream now, the nightmare his life had become until it eventually ended. He loved her still, craved her still, needed her still.   
  
The woman now beside him walked towards Faye.   
  
In the pain of blood and flashes of past fragments that once had stopped but were now all coming back, he sprinted to step in front of Faye, and stared into brown burnt eyes that chilled frozen when they met his. No pride, no protectiveness, no feeling, just action as he stared into the eyes of a common enemy, common friend, and common stranger. He had his knife in his back pocket and he slowly reached his hand back to get to it.   
  
The woman didn't see, didn't want to see. She looked at him, fearless, angry, sadly. He saw so much of what he once was, still was in the starless depths of a charred soul. He didn't like what he saw, he didn't like the image she painted with her eyes filled with hate, contempt, and lack of hope. And was Faye her hope? Was that need in her soul the same as his had been for Julia? Maybe not love, but a need, a want to have a life with which to live among. Was it that same wish he found only a sacred wisp of something just distant of a dream?  
  
"Move," was all she said. Her voice said it all. Faye was her hope, he could see it, feel it, and just barely comprehend it.  
  
He smiled, tried not to wince or stumble with pain as he grinned. "A little foreword, aren't we?" Mocking, he had always done that when he had been with Jet. It was the game of mocking the enemy that made the job fun, enjoyable. He'd been semi-happy then, semi-alive, semi-whole. Through the pain and blood, he could find a smile, maybe not a real one, but a smile nonetheless. He liked its effect on people, how it pissed them off. He saw her reaction, semi-laughed, and felt a little bit of the old Spike inside his heart.   
  
"Move away from Julia." Spat with hatred.   
  
The old Spike faded instantly.   
  
He felt his face harden, felt his whole body go rigid, and his voice loose all its amusement. "That isn't her name, her name is Faye." He stepped towards the smaller woman, a breath away from her and growled with an inhuman hate and menace. "Don't ever mention the name Julia again." And it hurt, God it hurt to say that name, it hurt to think that someone like the woman before him was using Julia's name, a word that meant nothing except a memory that needed to be buried but couldn't die in his heart enough to let things live on. It hurt to think that's all the name meant to him. Once it had meant freedom. Once it had meant something he could have dreamt about. Now, it was just something that meant he was alone- cold and alone, and alive.   
  
"Step away from Faye." The woman stepped up to him, their faces inches apart as her eyes narrowed and he shivered inwardly with the glare her soul gave him. "I'll kill you, Spike Spiegel. I know your kind, the way you hurt and don't care. Get the hell away from her before I rip your cold heart out and throw it out the fuckin' window!" The woman's eyes blazed, her heart screamed to him through shattered brown glass, her eyes, his eyes, hate sparked, death singing in the red air, blinking on and off, back and forth between time and eternity.  
  
He didn't think.   
  
He acted.   
  
She yelled out in surprise and stepped back, the knife sticking out of her side as she cursed and looked at him. Suddenly the lights were part of the picture again, the sirens screaming through his ears as they finally took toll on who he was, all that the woman was- two people on the verge of the end of the world. And then that world stopped and the white lights were on and everything was that same normal heavenly white. All except for the blood, his, hers, that lay all over the walls, the floor, their faces, and bodies that stood ready to challenge life for life, hate for hate, and reason for understanding.   
  
"You lost. You're attack must have failed." He smiled, no victory in the action, only sorrow, understanding, and pity. He knew it was the pity that made her snarl and glare at him. He would have done the same.  
  
"I haven't lost yet," she said angrily as she stepped to the window and dove out- blood flying from where she once stood and landing like angry puddles against the pallor of white, the paleness of life.   
  
He didn't look to see if she died or if she found away to get away. He knew she'd gotten away, knew that their next encounter was as certain as the next dawn coming. What he was uncertain about was what was going to happen the next time they met. He didn't know her, she didn't know him, and yet he knew they both thought they had each other figured out. She was a mystery, a shadow in his mind now.  
  
He turned to Faye and limped over to her. She was pale, breathing and he pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face. Her skin was soft, warm and feverish, and he did his best to try and pick her up. She was light, but it hurt a great deal to hold her, his arm and leg were screwed up and his loss of blood was making him lightheaded. His vision blurred, he saw Faye's face, and smiled despite himself. Everything over a woman. Wounds, pain, memories- and a woman was in the center yet again. That's why he hated them, they made so much damn trouble in his life but the normalcy in which things seemed to fall into place made him smile, the dazed look of a person not in his right mind grasping for sanity where he found none. He liked the feeling, to be free, to understand in a blurry effect of comprehending.   
  
He set Faye in her bed and collapsed on the side, his cheek resting against the white sheets, his smile fading as a last sigh escaped his lips and he drifted into unconsciousness.   
  
~`~`~`~`~  
  
  
Shin walked among the chaos. Bodies, dead, wounded, helping, alive. His life now, his life then. It hadn't been alot to know that Spike was alive, that he himself had been saved. It really hadn't meant that much, he hadn't really cared. He hadn't wanted to be leader, he'd wanted Spike to be leader, knew that Spike didn't want to be top dog, and so he had taken it upon his own shoulders. But he felt corrupted now, in a way he never felt when the Van had been around. He hadn't understood what it was like to live and to make decisions based of the facts of what was best for the syndicate, he hadn't wanted to accept the fact that being leader of the organization would make his life hell, make him hard and cold, make him unforgiving because the decisions for the Red Dragons were unforgiving. He hadn't known then that right and wrong wouldn't matter now.   
  
He stared at his hands for a second, wondered who they belonged to, saw her face, turned away and looked around. She was the only one he cared about, and he couldn't have her- at least not yet.   
  
He stared at the ruin of the front desk of the Red Dragon's building. He just had the place rebuilt and remodeled and it was almost back to square one. The marble floors were cracked, the golden dragons that stood on pedestals were dust at his feet, the walls were covered with bullet holes and there was a gaping hole in the front where the doors once were. Bodies lay all over the place, groaning, and cursing, and an occasional scream echoed around the walls, around the dusted air. It chilled Shin for a minute, he saw graves, tombstones, the endless flight from life to death flash before his eyes as his men and women swarmed around him in piles of dirt.   
  
"Shin?" The faces disappeared and he was in reality, looking at a woman with red ribbon hair and green cat-like eyes. He stared at her for a minute knowing that the Red Dragons was going to be her tombstone as well. Then he shifted, moved his thoughts away and smiled with confidence.   
  
"Marie, status?" His voice was soft, it always had an undertone of gentleness to it despite the years traveled by.   
  
"Just the front lobby and first floor were penetrated. A few rooms on the upper floors were hit by single men or women who are all taken into custody by now as well." Marie checked the clip board that she held in her arms. "Ten dead, twenty wounded, and both accounts are being added to as we speak." She looked up into his eyes, tears covering the green cat eyes with pain. She had lost someone, Shin took note of that, and made himself more grim, more caring, more vengeful for her reasons.   
  
"Who attacked us?" Shin asked as he looked around at the destruction of his sanctuary.   
  
"Fyre, the same syndicate that that young woman was from." Shin could feel part of his blood boil. Fyre was one of their most deadly enemies, and lately there had been many invasions of territory that had Shin on edge with anger. Shops from where they were extorting money from, drug deals, and assassinations had all been bungled by the other syndicate and Shin was more than a little angry about it. But he wanted peace, and didn't want to cause any trouble. Lately, peace between Fyre and the Red Dragons was becoming more distant, the past two attacks proving that Fyre didn't really want peace anyway.   
  
Shin nodded and waited taking everything in. She knew what he wanted to hear next and she tried to smile. "We have no word on where Spike is."   
  
Shin felt his face fall, felt his heart skip a beat before he nodded and dismissed the woman with his hand. For a second he pondered, and then the seconds passed into a minute in which he firmly decided Spike was not dead. Spike simply could not die, it wasn't in the older man's nature to go down with a single wound if not many more. It wasn't as if Shin cared about Spike anyway, so much more as believed in him. He believed in Spike, and he trusted in the older man, but that was as far as friendship went. He didn't have to like, or appreciate, because he couldn't, wouldn't let himself. Everything he felt or saw in Spike, was everything he knew was in a sense a kind of justice he would, or never could, possess.   
  
Shin reached into his pocket, fished for his phone and took it out, his hair flying around his face. He cursed as it blew over his eyes, thinking about the gel he had in it most of the time making him look like his older brother Lin. He shook his head, tried to straighten his thoughts out and dialed Spike's number, knowing if he didn't answer then it was possible to track him through the device in his phone. The phone rang and Shin backed his back up against the wall to lean on, staring at the cracks that focused in and out of his vision as he waited. His brown eyes gleamed hazel and then the phone picked up. "Spike, where are yo-"   
  
"Hello?" It wasn't Spike's voice, but a solitary female one. It was cracked, filled with pain? Shin shivered thinking of her and knowing it wasn't her at the same time.   
  
"Who is this?" He asked his eyes narrowing. There was a silent pause and the silence stretched into his heart as he waited for an answer. He tapped his fingers against the cracked marble of the wall and waited, clearing his throat to let the person know on the other line that he was expecting an answer.   
  
"Does it matter?" Came the small reply.   
  
No, he guess it really didn't matter who it was if Spike was all right. "Is Spike there?"   
  
There was another pause and then a small intake of breath as if the person on the other line couldn't catch their breath. Just then the connection began to break, and other voices from other phone calls were being picked up. He smacked his phone against his palm, angry that they were loosing connection. "Damn battery," he muttered as he hit the phone again.   
  
"The man with the green hair? Spike?" Came the voice over the static.   
  
"Green hair? Yeah, that's Spike," he said a little louder than normal talking. He wasn't sure if she could hear him. The people around him were looking at him and shaking their heads as he listened intently to the speaker of his phone.   
  
"He's fine, they took him to the emergency room to stitch up some wounds...." Her voice trailed off.   
  
"Hey, hey!" He wanted to curse at the phone as static played over the rest of the woman's words. He waited and listened trying to hear any bit of sentence he could. So Spike had been wounded, and he was in the emergency room at the Red Dragons? Where the hell was he? Spike had to be there, he had been in the infirmary when the attack hit hadn't he? Shin cursed and was about to turn off his phone when a single voice stood out from the static.   
  
"We failed..." In and out words came. "No... Fay- Julia is alive...... it can't be helped... We lost more than.... of our troops.... I'm returning..... Killing... not my mission...." Then the voice cut out leaving Shin feeling incredibly hollow, her voice ringing in his head. Even after seventeen years he could still remember the way she had smiled, the way she had cried, the way she had loved him, her voice the same even after so long made him want to scream her name and shout out to her. He was older now, once he would have done so but now he was older wiser, and still the same little boy who once knew that little girl so well.   
  
"Lexi," he mummered as he turned the phone off and walked over to the stairwell, closing off his thoughts of Lexi and moving to more important things. Like how the hell he was going to retaliate against the enemy.   
  
~`~`~`~`~  
  
He stood in the shadows, his eyes staring out the window with an angry glare like always. Again she came up silently beside him and she put a hand on his back, her long hair flowing behind her like a cape. He turned towards her, eyes softening for a minute before becoming cold and bleak again. "Lexi failed."   
  
"No, not really. She found out that Julia was alive," she said, her eyes soft, voice calm. She loved Lexi, didn't like to show it, but saw the girl as another daughter she needed to protect.   
  
"Faye," he corrected with bitterness.   
  
She smiled and kissed his cheek in motherly love. "Faye," she corrected for him. She brushed his hair from his face, and he grabbed her hand and pushed it away. He didn't like to be touched, even by her. Touch was of intimate trust, and though he trusted her, he still hated what feeling of any kind represented. But it didn't hurt her to think that he didn't love her, somewhere in all the hate he held he loved her enough to stand with her. That was something she learned never to take for granted. The only thing she regretted was letting him hate the way he did. Whatever she had done, she hadn't wanted him to be so cold and isolated from the world because of being hurt.  
  
"I wasn't all that upset that she had died in mission." His eyes were straight out into the silence of the day. His reflection stared back at him and what she saw on the clearness of a glassed over world was the same young boy she loved and cherished.   
  
"Yes, you were, you just don't want to admit it." He turned to face her, anger coursing through his veins, into his eyes that spoke louder than words. She recoiled, sensing danger and fear. "Why so angry?" She wanted to touch his face again, take away the hunger and starvation of love. She had tried her best to give all she had to him, and she was only sorry that it hadn't been enough.   
  
"She left me." He sounded so bitter, so unconcerned, so indifferent. He turned back to the window. Daylight shone against the pale bleakness of his skin, the outer exterior of his shadow that hid behind the gray of life. He was truly a beautiful man, but in the shadows his beauty was only skin deep, any inner beauty he may have had died long ago.  
  
"It wasn't her fault." There was pain in her voice, pain in the dark room where they stood like hidden demons in some kind of hell that was different from all the other kinds. Cut off, uncaring, alone. No one but memories to fuel the energy they both needed to move on, carry on, and try to live on if living was simply breathing and not believing in anything but the past.   
  
"She should have stayed dead." He didn't really mean that did he? She smiled at him sadly, it was all she could do.   
  
"You lost her once, then almost twice, do you really want to loose her again?"  
  
There was silence and she stiffened and brought the folder which held the reports of both wounded and dead. She was efficient with her work, proposed to get it done even before the enemy retaliated the records. She brushed her fingers of her his hand and tried to smile. She couldn't do anything for him, she wished she could, but he didn't want her to do anything, and she knew that she wouldn't be the one he would eventually let in. She began to walk out of the room.   
  
"I want her dead." She froze at his words. So unemotional, so indifferent. She slowly turned around and stared wide at him.   
  
"What?" She asked hoping her ears had betrayed her.   
  
"I want her dead," he said again, his voice cutting the air with distilled ice. "And I want Lexi to do it." She didn't say anything. There wasn't anything she could say. "If Lexi refuses, tell her we have rights to kill her if she doesn't accept her mission. She failed the mission that Faye failed to complete. I want Faye dead, and if Lexi wants to keep her life she will do as ordered."  
  
The woman nodded as if numbed to the point of being a zombie. Then she shook off that exterior of shock and nodded, her efficient change of character back to the business cold hearted woman she was supposed to be, making her an ice queen reserved in his darkness. She bowed once, turned on her thin high heels and walked out of the room, angry as she slammed the door to his office.   
  
He stood behind closed doors and growled. Had any other woman walked out of his room and slammed his door he would have had their heads. But his mother was a different story... She always was a different story all together. He sat down at his desk and began to got over his files in the darkness of his hell hole of an endless night, his anger pitching towards the cold hate that fueled his will to live. He only wished that he could have given the news to Lexi himself, but knew it wise to let his mother take the initial blame for betrayal and hatred. He smiled, watching Faye's face in his mind as he pictured her screaming for the life he should have been a part of.   
  
He didn't care who the hell Faye had been to him once. She wasn't anything to him now but another useless life.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
A/N--- YEAAAH bad, ne? Sorry I haven't written in awhile and this was all you got after such a long wait,,,, but......  
SOOOOOOORRRYYYYY!!!!!!!!! Ps- wasn't able to read over... sorry for the mistakes... 


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